


I did not see these three birds

by LuciusIII



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Also the dragonborn girl is trans, Hogsbottom, In the days before the hunger attacks, Is this fiction or just garbage, M/M, NPC's - Freeform, No main characters - Freeform, Rockport, Short, So basically it's three shots of regular people, Why? because i wrote it and I want her to be, goldcliff, we may never know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 20:44:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciusIII/pseuds/LuciusIII
Summary: The days before the hunger strikes Faerûn bring a gloom over every city and town on the planet, which affects the citizens of the world more than it does our main adventurers. This is a collection of three snapshots from daily fantasy lives in those fateful days.
Kudos: 3





	I did not see these three birds

**Author's Note:**

> I saw seven birds  
They had roles and names  
Millions of others flapped their wings  
But their story was not told

We see a dragonborn waitress putting down a tray of beautiful cocktails for a couple of dwarven guests in her café opposite the Goldcliff Trust. Her establishment is a large, high-fashion business where bankers and other businessmen came to shift large sums of gold between hands over fancy drinks with magical liquors and fresh fruit in them. Business has been slow the last few days, as the sun has disappeared behind clouds that have been growing slowly darker, blocking the hot rays of sunlight that normally compelled the high life of Goldcliff to seek out her bar. She does not blame them: they sit in their offices with their magical lights pretending this strange summer week is not happening, and while she loves her job, sometimes she wishes she could do the same. For now, she stands behind the counter and wonders if there is a place in Faerûn where the sun still shines as it did just a week prior. She suddenly looks up at the clouds when a flash of colour seems to run through it. She blinks twice and convinces herself that she didn’t see anything. She jots down _“sleep more”_ in her notepad but inside, she knows she will not get to it: no one in Goldcliff ever gets to sleep more. Unbeknownst to her or the guests in her café, the storm brewing above the city will bring more than rain to Goldcliff.

We see a giant, heavily tattoed and battle-scarred orc in a household apron doing the washing outside his house in Hogsbottom. He scrubs his family’s tunics on the washboard set in the comically small tub that his gnome husband bought before they moved in together. He looks down the road his house is on and sees that the streets are noticeably bare. Most of the town’s kids are in school at this time of day but normally, there would still be some noise of laughter and crying that accompanied the play sessions of children skipping school or enjoying time off. Today, the street is silent: a man walks down the opposite side of the street but does not look up from his boots and does not see the hand the orc raises at him. The orc frowns and bends back over the laundry. The last week has brought dark skies in the midst of summer and with it, a strange mood has fallen over the town. In the bubbles that form on the clothes in the tub, the orc sees the reflection of the stormy clouds above. He does not know what is to come, but a shudder travels down his spine, nonetheless.

We see a field of crops outside of Rockport with the towering chimneys of the _City of Industry TM_ on the skyline. A young elf walks among the berry bushes, prodding between the low leaves with a stick and looks up at the sky, which has darkened in the last few days. They don’t know what has caused the sky to go dark in the middle of summer, but they do know their grandfather blamed it on “The damn wizards” again, as he had before with the train crash in the garden district and the day the moon moved. All the young elf knew was that the clouded sky seemed to damage their berries: the colour seemed drained from them, from the budding fruits that were to be harvested in autumn as well as from the leaves that were to be left on the land through winter. The elf knew little of magic, destiny or the weaving threads of fate: all they knew was that their world was drained of its saturation, and for a farmer, that meant bad news.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this is something someone can enjoy! It's quite short but I think it gets the message across nonetheless. Let me know what you think!


End file.
